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Show 610 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT or two members expressed unhappiness at the idea of ending homesteading in the tract, inhospitable as it was. Management of the district was left largely in the hands of the users of the range. Rent for the Federal and state lands was set at slightly over 3 cents an acre but since the laws of Montana prohibited leasing for less than double this amount, Congress and the Interior Department were willing to help out the district by exchanging lands outside it for those of the state within. An Act of March 1, 1929, authorized these exchanges.5 Forest Service personnel aided in getting plans under way and in determining the amount of stock the range could carry while being restored to a better condition. Artificial reservoirs were constructed and miles of fencing built to distribute and control grazing. The result was that the forage value of the land was increased 38 percent. The success of this first district was cited, as its projectors had anticipated, as an argument for establishing similar regional districts, and perhaps finally for a general law to apply to all the public ranges.6 Other grazing districts were subsequently established on the Mizpah-Pumpkin Creek model. The Secretary of the Interior reported in 1934 that 192,320 acres of public land had been included in a grazing district in Rosebud and Custer Counties, 175,000 acres in one in Garfield County, both districts in Montana, and 1,280,312 acres in a grazing district in Uintah County, Utah.7 Under an Act of March 4, 1931, the Owens River-Mono Basin Grazing Reserve was created in California for the protection of the Los Angeles water supply. Included in 545Stat. 380, 1430. 6 R. B. Tootell, "Grazing Districts. Nature and Possibilities in Range Land Utilization," Montana Extension Bulletin, No. 127 (December 1932), pp. 4-9; Cong. Record, 73d Cong., 2d sess., April 10, 1934, p. 6359; Roland R. Renne, The Government and Administration of Montana (New York, 1958), pp. 315-18. 7 Ibid., pp. 66-67. the reserve were 865,000 acres, and 70 free use permits were granted. Taylor Grazing Act The combination of drought with poor forage and the low prices previously mentioned demoralized the livestock industry and brought about a change in its attitude toward Federal management of the public rangelands. Not that Federal management was the most desirable plan; few westerners thought so; but since transfer to the states was not acceptable there seemed no feasible alternative. In the 2d session of the 72d Congress Don M. Colton, leading Republican on the Public Lands Committee, with the assistance of John M. Evans, Democrat and Chairman of the Committee, succeeded in pushing through the House the Colton bill with little discussion and no division. It received no consideration in the Senate.8 Colton was defeated in the sweep of 1932. Edward T. Taylor, who had earlier been the House sponsor of the 640-acre Stock Raising Homestead Act, now took the bill in his charge; the resulting measure, which was very similar to the Colton bill, was thereafter to be called the Taylor Act.9 8 Cong. Record, 72d Cong., 2d sess., Feb. 7, 1933, p. 3569. The Colton bill and all the discussion are on pp. 3562-69. 9 The major difference between the Colton and Taylor bills was that the former included a provision authorizing any of the 11 grazing states to exclude itself from Federal management if it so desired. There was no such provision in the Taylor bill. Cong. Record, 73d Cong., 2d sess., April 10, 1934, pp. 6362, 6365-66. Taylor did not spare Congress or himself for the error made either in adopting the Act of 1916 or in not repealing it long before 1934. In a speech lauding the Taylor Grazing Act on June 28, 1935, the Representative said, "Congress has never been willing to recognize this condition [unadaptability of the rangelands to farming] and encouraged ill-advised people to homestead in these arid areas with a resulting tragic loss of their time, labor, money, and appalling hardships and heartbreaking disappointments, and thousands of them being compelled to abandon their claims and the lands have gone to tax sale or returned to the public domain." Cong. Record, 74th Cong., 1st sess., June 28, 1935, p. 10394. |